Sunday, 14 July 2013

More than one night after closing time driving drunk straight down the 9th Line, gravel, no cops, as fast as she'd go with this tune on max. Pedal to the metal, Russian intersections through the stopsigns. Bongo riff at the start still sets me off twenty years later; "broken words never meant to be spoken". Play it Bob!

That, and The Swallow. I had a way of torturing the last line of each verse, twisting the key minor somehow to make it ... as bitter as it feels.The thing about computer programming, one of the things, is that you can sometimes get it right. It is possible to write (admittedly relatively small and bounded) patches of code that are perfect. Not for long mind you, things change quickly, but for a moment at least. Like wazizname in 'A Voyage to Arcturus' ... Panawe, Joiwind's husband.

I don't understand the ones who proclaim "Don't complain, don't explain," ... as if; but it works ... sort of. Keeps the lid on I guess.

I got hooked early on geometry. I like to figgure things out; be able to confidently write QED at the end of a proposition. It's a problem though because the figgurings look like blame (where there is really none at all) and you wind up shamed, crippled in a double bind.

There are antidotes: Incredible String Band - Cousin Caterpillar ... I wish I could find Pied Pumpkin with their story of Mister Mulvangel ... but it is just not there ... "flew once around the bay and shit upon the Dew Drop Inn," is how I remember it.

This is the meat of the matter.

I may say (and often do), "I don't care," but of course I care very much. The indifference and silence (enmity?) of old friends and family cuts like a knife. Sure I care. I wake from bad dreams mumbling "I'm sorry," and it goes on all day, a mantra and constant meditation.
I must be getting soft: the movie Flight touches me - touches Gable too obviously. Denzel Washington & Stephen Harper are not the only ones flying upside-down. From Bashar al-Assad, José dos Santos, Tayyip Erdoğan, to ... Barack Obama. They're all doin' the Hokey Pokey: baffle their brains with bullshit; crush 'em & shush 'em; panem et circenses; lies, propaganda, secret police, legalized murder; whatever it takes ...

And yet the general population is ever so slowly (but inevitably since it's physics not a horse race) recognizing that &frac23;rds are living on time borrowed from the future - the planet supports 2-3 billion, we have 7-8, QED.

A very large number of people (just like you and me), an almost unimaginable number of people, are going to suffer and die, are going to watch their loved ones die, are going to be forced into competition to the death over a bit of food. Tell me this isn't so if you are able to. I don't want to know it. ... But I don't think you can. (See Gwynne below.)

What does it mean to be upside-down in this context?Macbeth comes to mind: here or here. Can you get through school these days without reading it? Probably.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

1.

When shall we three meet againe?

In Thunder, Lightning, or in Raine?

2.

When the Hurley-burley's done,

When the Battaile's lost, and wonne.

3.

That will be ere the set of Sunne.

1.

Where the place?

2.

Upon the Heath.

3.

There to meet with Macbeth.

1.

I come, Gray-Malkin.

All

Padock calls anon: faire is foule, and foule is faire,

Hover through the fogge and filthie ayre. Exeunt.

We could call this 'morality masquerading as superstition'. For 'superstition masquerading as morality' consider the several references to unnatural acts by lions in the early scenes of Julius Caesar (IVLIVS CÆSAR: I-iii & II-ii).

It took me a long time to figgure out how much the left-libs of the United Church distrust (hate?) Northrop Frye (and Blake by association) - nevermind 'socialist', Blake's a fricken' romantic! and we know where that can lead ... Nietzsche, Wagner ... Hitler!

Martin Buber gets about the same reception; and to think I used to get into discussions with some of these people using Frye & Buber as authorities - naïve knucklehead eh? Haveta laugh.

A Poison Tree
(Christian Forebearance)

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

William Blake,
Songs of Innocence and Experience, 1794.

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

This is a tune from just after WWI, 1919; about the same time that 'french kiss' entered the vocabulary apparently (though here the OED has failed to elucidate - wankers!). 'French letter' came along in the mid-1800s (again no thanks to the OED) so who can say?

Interesting resonance with 'galocher' recently introduced to French dictionaries (according to the news). Galoshes?

Ah that Gallic sense of humour.My point is that it is important, even imperative, to understand the drivers, the cultural engines of out-of-control urbanization & consumerism. Someone who knew her social history once said to me, "The rich and powerful have always had more-or-less complete sexual freedom. Gaining that freedom (licence?) is one of the main reasons for wanting to be wealthy."

Hopefully understanding leads to compassion rather than judgement.Zero-sum Game ...

... (sort of).

[The cartoonist, David Baldinger (more recently here) seems to have given it up - some kind of mental health issue. I can't help but wonder if the cure (or attempted cure) has anything to do with the end of the artwork?]

A zero-sum game is a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s); that's to say: a strictly competitive game/situation. If you read the fine print on Wikipedia you will see that economics & politics don't make the cut. There are subtleties: the degree of rationality of markets etc.; but still, a useful metaphor.

Tantalum now ... or increasingly scarce resources generally ... or ... survival? And then there is the wrinkle of survival for how long? A week? A year? A decade? A generation? Two? I'll leave it with you. Carefully though - or that smart-phone in your hand might start to look like an instrument of rape.

[Michael Ramirez (on the other hand) seems to be more towards the conservative end of the spectrum, according to Wikipedia at least, and thriving.]

Pot-pourri: (in memory of Rowan & Martin's Laugh In; also pauperie & popery)I wanted to mention that the EU is now more-or-less restricting the use of four of the numerous pesticides threatening honey bees: thiamethoxam (Helix XTra® and Cruiser® brands), clothianidin, imidacloprid, and fipronil. I was going to build a table of active ingredients, manufacturers, brand names etc. but ... who cares?The FAO continues to lower the Food Price Index (marginally). They appear to have made a right cheer-leader out of Abdolreza Abbassian. Can't believe a word they say.Instead of dealing with quality issues around Chinese solar panels, the EU & the USA are busy building trade barriers. Doh!?Turnkey Tyranny:David Bromwich on Edward Snowden in LRB, June 21 2013. First Guardian interview (12 minutes) and second Guardian interview (7 minutes). (Also available on YouTube - but then ... YouTube is now part of the problem.) And various articles in The Guardian which you can find, here's a start.

Glenn Greenwald lives in Rio apparently - good for him :-)

Our Barack is not going to scramble jets he says (yet?) but he is doing everything south of that.This is too strong for the left-libs of Vancouver apparently - Georgia Strait, which usually publishes Gwynne Dyer's articles, passed on this one: Tripoli Post: World Population: The African Exception, Gwynne Dyer, June 26 2013. Even Gwynne himself seems to me to be pulling his punches - but the necessary & sufficient information is in there. Read slowly - this is tough stuff.Well ... not 'Earth' exactly; the planet will be fine ...

... civilization & humanity not so much.

[The cartoonist, Justin Bilicki, is a good consumer - he writes copy for Mercedes, Masterfoods (Snickers), Fedex, Footlocker. The cartoon thing was always a sideline which he gave up to pursue the career ... haveta smile :-) ]

Otherwise we might have a billion years or so to figgure out what to do when the sun becomes enough of a red giant to really & finally cook us. This whole climate change/global warming/environmental catastrophe could be viewed as a kind of ... practice run. So far the grade is D- to F - verging on W (withdrawn).

One wonders if there is a kind of uncertainty principle at work? (Nonsense of course.) Violence will visit us through one slot or the other, but it will visit - like the Royal Mail, the light must get through!

I know it's completely unreasonable (UNREASONABLE & FUCKED-UP CRAZY!) to go comparing war violence with economic violence; but eonomic violence is one way of looking at where the environmental Armageddon is coming from eh? Do I have to spell it out?

Or the violence of lies, intentional untruths used to manipulate and control complacent consumers, voters, 'citizens'. The language of doublespeak, equivocation, in which there is no possibility of love because there is no possibility of clear communication. And a tip of the hat to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

This meditation goes on to benign neglect, awkward silences, bureaucratic compassion and the like, and fetches up on shunning. Violence is so flexible & versatile.

But it could just as well be Van Morrison's Domino: "... if you never hear from him, that just means he didn't call ... and if you never hear from me, that just means I would rather not."IEA, neither lightweights nor radicals:

The report itself; and videos of Maria van der Hoeven & Fatih Birol 'launching' it: parts one & two. But ...
... check out the empty chairs when Fatih presents it to the UNFCCC in Bonn.Then Barack Obama stands out in the hot sun in Georgetown to say a few more-or-less lame words. But even the Pulitzer prize winning journalists at Inside Climate News claim to be mystified: Obama on Keystone Pipeline Is All Things at Once.

High Water Mark: I predict a die-off in interest in the Internet, even email (which is no longer private). Not much of a prediction - equal parts of: making principles out of incapacities; Delphic/Orphic pretence; predilection; & wishful thinking.

Oh, and the Blogger button that says 'Don't track my pageviews' doesn't work either. In fact, every 'Preview' may also be being counted; and given the rudimentary HTML editor provided (necessitating constant previews to see what you've got) most of what I thought were hits may actually be ... me. This would explain the lack of comments despite apparently robust traffic.

'No Evil,' hahahahahaha ... in addition to surveillance for NSA these fuckin' maggots support James Inhofe!

So ... time for a general withdrawl from the scene and Duck Duck Go for any back-sliding.So tempting to say, "It's neither the 1% nor the 99% - it's the 9944/100% (Ivory Pure)."They have been at it again in Bonn with more UNFCCC nonsense (June 3-15); and the Citizens Climate Lobby in Washington (June 23-25); a-and the 350/Global Power Shift in Istanbul (June 24-30) ... Someone has got to persuade these people to all go home and find something useful to do that involves no air travel, no five star hotels, no purchases of any kind, no automobiles ... ?

No one sets out to arrive in this place, but yes, some do wind up here - on the beach, and worse. I wish I had some piece of porn to show you that's equal to the moment. Don't, sorry again ... maybe just the last few minutes of Blow Up.

It's a bust gentle reader. Nothin' lef't'do but suck it up. Hum a few bars of Flanders Fields - "to you from failing hands we throw" ... whatever. Two items on the agenda got dropped: what I've finally figgured out around my personal history; and, a more detailed list of apologies. Par. Oh well ... trust me.

Esteja bem.

[No idea what to do now ... big hole to fill, no cash, bad health ... boo hoo ...

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

almost fergot It takes a lot laugh it takes a train to cry ...]
Dad just wanted to find a good recipe for rice dumplings.
Isn't that terrible? Just a simple recipe for rice dumplings can create ...
... another Internet slave.
You're driving me crazy. / That's impossible. / You were born like that.

... OK, here you go then.

This is what you want, right?

Sonya N. She is a porn star.

Something in an image I saw of her got to me; a certain authenticity (ridiculous notion in the context I know); a (probably chimærical & spurious) vulnerability. (But the categories are useful eh?)

But on looking it over, what can be quickly seen of it; I think the story of Sonya N. has not much in common with that of Christiane F. - different kind of jeopardy altogether, American style. I could be wrong.

Sonya is marketed for her unshaved armpits - if you want to see more of her Google 'Sonya hairy porn' for images and fill your boots.

When my father died and I went to deal with his belongings I was (almost) surprised to find a cache of skin books in the top drawer of his bureau - half-hidden under clothes. Old men like to look at young women, naked or not - it's a fact. There's a lot that could be said about this - I'm not even gonna try to say any of it.The images underneath these thumbnails are explicit so if you don't want to see 'em, don't click on 'em:

Except to say: this is the driving engine of the Internet. This is 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower' and so on ... Dylan Thomas writes "drives my green age;" I would have said 'drives my dull age', there you go ... no respect.